Search

Awhile back I wrote a post about Japanese idioms called 「慣用句」 (“kanyouku“).

These are expressions in Japanese such as:
● 「ゴマすり」 (“Gomasuri“) which literally means to grind sesame seeds…but the meaning of the expression is to “brown nose” (which itself is an idiom in English).

A "suribachi" and "surikogi" are tools to actually grind sesame seeds in Japan.

But there is another type of idiom in Japan called 「四字熟語」 (“yojijukugo“).
This type of expression originated in China and uses four characters to give advice in a simple poetic form.

I’m not sure how it is in the Chinese language (since I can’t speak Chinese at all) but this type of idiom doesn’t actually follow proper Japanese-language grammar…but that’s part of what gives them their simple poetic charm.

What I want to do with this blog post is a type of game using five famous Japanese yojijukugo idioms.

You don’t need to know how to read or understand Japanese.

I will write the five idioms and give the literal meaning of the four characters that comprise each expression.
In the comments section of this post, try to guess the English equivalent of each Japanese idiom…and then come back to this post and read the answers which I will have at the bottom of this post.

Try to guess what each expression is in English before you read the answers! The literal meaning of the characters should give you a hint.